Month: July 2015

Some of my classmates surveying a spread of tomatoes, pasta salads, lemon cake and lentils. Class is over. No more 3 hour lectures stuck in uncomfortable chairs, no more attendance checks, no more bus rides to Pollenzo. By comparison to my last day at Middlebury, yesterday afternoon felt quite unremarkable. We each brought a dish that we could tell a story about, we sat down together around a large table, there was some wine, we cleaned up, and that was it. No fireworks. No nothing. I think it was partly because the visiting professor offered up some of his very apt observations about our class, namely that we were a fragmented bunch each looking ahead to going our own way. I can certainly say that I feel and have felt that way for a while–being in and around a group of 24 students was overwhelming for me at times, so I snuck in some alone time wherever I could. And now we’re headed off for a few months of internship. Some to work in kitchens, …

Some ravioli (or more specifically, agnolotti as they call them up here in Piemonte) stuffed with potato and herbs from the garden. No meat. Too hot for that. Way too hot. I’m in the home stretch. Two days left of Master’s classes before I head out into the big wide world to continue my training as a gastronome on my own terms. This weekend, a few of my classmates and I discovered some places in this region that have been under our noses the whole time but impossible to get to without a car. If only Zipcar were here… (PS that would never happen, the paperwork would take decades.) On Sunday morning we partook in a pasta making workshop with the lovely Alessandra Buglioni di Monale, a guest chef at the UNISG Canteen a few weeks ago and a soul sister of Good Food Awards Founder Sarah Weiner in terms of her demeanor and body language. Alessandra walked us through the egg to flour to water ratios in three kinds of pasta: tagliatelle (more specifically, tajarin as they …

In a faceoff between avocado toast and rose, the Californian in me has to pick the avo. Welcome to July! Here are some good, mostly food-related (surprise, anyone?) reads to peruse with an iced tea in a cool place (though obviously not air conditioned in my case because Northern Italy isn’t quite ready for that). The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West by Michelle Goldberg I read a review of this book a few weeks ago in The New Yorker, so I decided to give it a good ol’ whirl on the Kindle. Warning: there is nothing fluffy in the Lululemon yoga matching outfits kind of sense about this book. I would describe it as a winding biography that has to do with fame/rich Europeans philosophizing about stuff. This woman did some serious globetrotting/schmoozing in her time and while I’m not super convinced that she is the reason that I have a yoga practice today, it’s a solid read for a nerdy, active type such …